Sunday, July 09, 2006

On va manger les spaghettis

Argh the dreaded demi ronde cinquante! The biggest heaviest meanest tile we make. And with a glaze too!These tile are always shit to make, and because its the first day of the cycle the press is never set up right. And so it came to pass....One of the problems is that the pour the plaster moulds nearly 8 hours ahead of time, so by the time we fire up the moulds are as dry as a bone and suck all the moisture out of the clay whic sticks to them. Its hard work trying to get 6 kilos of tile to let go of the mould without deforming the tile in just 4 seconds before the press turns and the next tile comes along.Anyway, with a lot of bitching and cadjoling we get the thing going. Gerard takes over from me after an hour and a short time after the klaxon goes off and the press stops. Seems gerard has been having trouble catching the tiles and has been dropping loads of them onto the conveyor belt below in the cellar. This has blocked up the conveyor belt. So we have to go down into the cellar (which is still flooded from last weeks storm) and pull out all the bists of trimmed tile and dropped tiles from the conveyor. Drop them, splash, onto the floor.Nounours tells me to take over again from Gerard if he can't hack it. This takes Gerard aback a bit because it means I'm doing double shifts with the heaviest hardest tiles. After an hour he takes over again and this time makes more of an effort.At the end of the shift I'm spattered with glaze. On of my co waorkers asks if I've been making bread.

There's world cup fever in the air. France in the final tonight. On va mager les spaghettis.